Deeplinks Blog posts about PATRIOT Act

USA Freedom requires the NSA to stop collecting our telephone records. An open question when the law passed was what should happen to the mountain of records the NSA has already collected. Will the records be destroyed? Will the NSA keep them? Will it be able to keep using them?

You may have heard that the Patriot Act is set to expire soon. That’s not quite the case. The Patriot Act was a large bill, as were the reauthorizations that followed in 2005 and 2006. Not all of it sunsets. But three provisions do expire on June 1st: Section 215, the "Lone Wolf provision," and the "roving wiretap" provision.

After months of negotiations, pressure from advocacy groups, and tens of thousands of messages from concerned citizens, the Senate failed to move the USA Freedom Act forward for a final vote. While it was a tough loss, a Republican Congress will be forced to take up NSA reform since three sections of the Patriot Act expire in June. The USA Freedom Act—a bipartisan bill with support in both houses of Congress—sets the minimum requirements needed for surveillance reform and should be reintroduced in the upcoming Congress.

How can the US government possibly claim that its collection of the phone records of millions of innocent Americans is legal? It relies mainly on two arguments: first, that no one can have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their metadata and second, that the outcome is controlled by the so-called “third party doctrine,” which says that no one has an expectation of privacy in information they convey to a third party (such as telephone numbers dialed). We expect the government to press both of these arguments on November 4, before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. We look forward to responding.

Oral argument will take place at 9:30 am at the D.C. Circuit Court at 333 Constitution Ave., NW, Courtroom 20, before Judges Sentelle, Williams and Brown. The public is welcome to attend.

Ever since the Snowden revelations, honest (and some dishonest) efforts have been made in Congress to try to scale back at least some of the NSA’s spying. It’s a complex problem, since the NSA has overstepped reasonable bounds in so many different directions and there is intense secrecy surrounding the NSA’s activities and legal analysis.

The bill with the best chance to make some positive change currently is the Senate version of USA FREEDOM Act, a new piece of legislation with an older name.

After extensive analysis and internal discussion, EFF has decided to support this bill. But given the complexities involved, we wanted to lay out our thinking in more detail for our friends and allies.